suzmccarth wrote:

>
> In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...> wrote:
> > suzmccarth wrote:
>
> > >
> > > "the type has been called neosyllabary [Fevrier], pseudo-alphabet
> > > [Householder], and semisyllabary [Diringer]. But these terms
> > > misleadingly suggest that the abugida is a subtype or hybrid of
> > > alphabet or syllabary - a notion that has led to unfortunate
> > > historic/evolutionary notions about the history of writing."
> > >
> > > WWS p. 4
> > >
> > > My question is 'misleadingly suggests to whom'?
> >
> > To the writers of most introductory linguistics textbooks, who have no
> > interest in writing systems but now feel obligated to include a mention
> > of them, and simply copy a reference to Gelb from one to another. That
> > was written more than a decade ago, you must recall.
>
> And that was when I wrote my little article in 1992 (pub. in 1996,
> Taylor and Olson) so that I would have a personal classification for
> Cree. It seemed just as bad that theory progressed from the
> evoutionary model to the idea that there were only phonographic or
> logographic scripts. Therefore syllabaries and alphabets as
> phonographic scripts behave in a similar manner. MRI research now
> shows they do not.

I don't know what "behave" means here (and don't worry, Sampson was a
temporary distraction from "real" writing systems study).

> H. Rogers even said "whatever is true of alphabets is true of
> syllabaries" because of Sampson's phonographic/logographic
> classification. (I see he now understands the abugida.:)
>
> So why is it hard to believe that Scribner and Cole, 1981, wrote
>
> "Development and use of a phonetic writing system such as the Vai
> script requires segmenting the stream of speech into a set of
> discrete units (in this case syllables. Skilled readers once they
> have mastered their own writing system, often take this sound
> analysis for granted. But it is not easily accomplished either by
> individuals first learning to read or by entire societies in the
> process of developing a writing sytem." p.32
>
> Scribner and Cole write an entire book without acknowledging that
> segmenting syllables into segments is different from segmenting
> speech into syllables! They don't want to consider the fact that Vai
> is a syllabary as a factor.

S & C isn't about writing systems, it's about literacy. It's actually
hard to extract any information about the Vai script from their book.

> > > And how could a term for a post-alphabetic syllabary lead to these
> > > unfortunate evolutionary notoions?
> >
> > Because it's not a friggin' syllabary at all.
>
> An alphabet-syllabaire or syllabaire secondaire. The term
> alphasyllabary might give someone the impression that it falls
> historically between the syllabary and the alphabet but neosyllabary
> sounds like a syllabary which follows an intervening development.

Exactly. That's why I reject both terms (and also Householder's term,
which is different yet again).

> > > If someone had read Fevrier they would know that a neosyllabary
> > > reflected prior discovery of the segments.
> >
> > How many American linguists (a) read books on writing systems (b) in
> > French?
>
> Not enough!
>
> > > I honestly don't know the answer and have been trying to ask this in
> > > one way or another since last year - so courteous please.
> > >
> > > And if someone else has misunderstood a term, does that disqualify
> > > it?
> >
> > When a non-misunderstandable term was readily available or coinable,
>
> But some find the term opaque - where is the ka-ki-ku ness of it
> all? Maybe they think the abugida does fall between the syllabary
> and the alphabet. The neosyllabary is a return to a previous mode
> after an intervening development. It more clearly establishes the
> historic sequence of a post-alphabetic script.

What is "ka-ki-ku ness"? The word is both Ge`ez and Amharic, and the
vowels are taken from the first four columns of the traditional syllable
chart (a u i aa).

> However, I realize that neosyllabary isn't really an ideal term in
> English. It probably does depend somewhat on the ideas of
> Giambattista Vico who was translated into French but never into
> English (maybe recently - I'm not sure).

I doubt Vico is in there. (Vico was thrust into the literate English
world's ken by Finnegans Wake -- "a commodious vicus of recirculation,"
right there in the first paragraph.)

> All I would like to say is that scripts are syllabic or alphabetic
> and phonographic but more or less logographic. These classifications
> are important. And syllabic scripts _can_ be composed
> systematically by the inventors into more or less opaque units.
>
> > yes.
> >
> > > >Under what possible definition of "alphasyllabary" does Hangul
> > > >qualify? (See WWS p. 4 n.
> > >
> > > I wouldn't want to classify Hangul, it is just an exercise in
> > > sounding silly as far as I can see, but the consonants and vowels
> > > are not in linear order - and I am not too sure denoting vowels with
> > > marks that are not of the same status as consonants is fundamental
> > > to an alphasyllabary although Bright says it is. There are
>
> > no one has found an earlier occurrence outside his own writings), so he
> > can define it however he wishes.
>
> Too close to the alphabet-syllabaire?
>
> BTW I have only been reading Cohen and Fevrier in the library - they
> have to get out a special ring of keys and a flashlight to take me
> down the naroow staircase to where they store the books that nobody
> reads:) And I have to go when the 'keeper of the storage' is on
> shift.
>
> No, I don't know what exact chart Taylor is talking about but there
> are many different Cree syllable charts also. I did notice though
> that the phenomenon of people learning to read outside of school is
> in common between Cree and Korean - also Vai but scribner and Cole
> don't discuss syllabaries so we don't know what they think about
> that.
>
> On another point, I understand that Korean has been taught _both_ as
> syllables and as an alphabet and that they merge at some point for
> the learners.

--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...